Lawn tennis stars reach quarter-finals in Botswana

All the country’s representatives at the on-going Southern Africa Junior Championships in Gaborone, Botswana have reached the quarter-finals.

Chisomo Lumeta won all his five first-round matches to lead in the Under-16 boys category while Linda Msiska triumphed in two of her assignments to get into the last-eight Under-12 girls section as fourth-placed.

Under-14 boys representative Anderson Mdala and his female compatriot Zione Nkhoma excelled after winning one of their three matches each.

This is the first time all the country’s flag careers in lawn tennis have made it into the knock-out stage of international championships.

Lawn Tennis Association of Malawi (Ltam) president Francis Mwansa expressed pride at the outcome, saying this could be the moment for Malawian tennis stars to win medals.

“These results are excellent. We really feel proud that finally, we can have all our representatives making it into a crucial stage. In the past, this was just a dream as we could hardly go beyond first-round matches,” said Mwansa.

The four athletes are expected to play their quarter-final games today.

If all of them manage to bring home gold medals, Lumeta will enhance his rating on the International Tennis Federation (ITF) ranking while his compatriots could follow him by winning scholarships at the ITF’s High Performance Centre (HPC) in Morocco.